Building on prior work that documented the impact of COVID-19 on firms in developing countries using the first wave of Business Pulse Surveys, this paper presents a new set of stylized facts on firm recovery, covering 65,000 observations in 38 countries. This paper suggests that: One, since the...

This paper uses comprehensive and comparable firm-level manufacturing censuses from four Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries to examine the extent, costs, and nature of within-industry resource misallocation between heterogeneous production units. This paper finds evidence of severe...

A new, innovation-led growth model would enable Argentina to increase economic stability and achieve stronger shared prosperity. Argentina can escape boom-and-bust cycles and accelerate its recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic with an innovation-driven economy that, in addition to factor...

One of the most common instruments of industrial policy is Export Processing Zones (EPZs). This paper shows the results of a systematic review of the impact of EPZs on employment, wages and labour conditions in developing countries. The results of synthesising 59 studies suggest that there is no...

After a half century of significant economic success, developing countries in East Asia are confronted by slowing productivity growth, increased fragility of the global trading system, and rapid changes in technology which are threatening their main engine of growth: export-oriented,...

This paper estimates the impact of technology sophistication pre-COVID-19 on the performance of firms during the early stages of the pandemic. It exploits a unique data set covering firms from Brazil, Senegal, and Vietnam, using a treatment effect mediation framework to decompose the results...

Anew, innovation-led growth model would enable Argentina to increase economic stability and achieve stronger shared prosperity. Argentina can escape boom-and-bust cycles and accelerate its recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic with an innovation-driven economy that, in addition to factor...